via Govt wants banks to manage $100mln Brazil farm facility By Bernard Mpofu, HARARE, March 3, (The Source)
Government plans to have local banks manage its $98.6 million small-scale agriculture credit facility with Brazil to minimise defaults, an official said.
Brazil extended the facility last August and the money would be disbursed in three tranches at six-month intervals.
Agriculture permanent secretary Ringson Chitsiko told a parliamentary portfolio committee on gender and development that the involvement of local banks would ensure timely repayments for the loans secured to acquire farming equipment.
“We are trying to source equipment from Brazil within the provisions of a government to government programme. When that equipment comes, we are hoping that it will go through the banks so that there is due diligence on the ability of the beneficiaries to pay for that equipment,” Chitsiko said.
“The beneficiaries that we are targeting are mostly smallholder farmers who can benefit in groups in a locality. They can acquire tillage equipment so that five or 10 of them can have a roaster on how to use that equipment. Or the individual farmer can apply and due diligence will be carried out by the bank who will be managing this facility. If all the requirements are satisfied the beneficiary gets the piece of equipment.”
Last month, agriculture minister, Joseph Made said the smallholder farmers, beneficiaries of land redistributed from whites, should not look up to government for inputs this season, a departure from the state’s tradition of dishing out free inputs and equipment over the last decade.
Made urged farmers to make individual arrangements with banks.
Chitsiko also lobbied Parliament to enact a law that compels farmers to carry out soil tests regularly because of concerns that many were overusing chemical fertilisers, damaging the land.
COMMENTS
no mention of the corruption planned
hee heee heee good luck Brazil, I hope you realise all the money will be going to generals and chiefs and the back pockets of Zanypf while the real farmers will continue to be impoverished
Define a real farmer? If there were any ‘real farmers’ left, then they wouldn’t need financial assistance after 14 years of taking over a farm which came complete with all the equipment etc. that they need. They should hang their heads in shame, all of them.
Ringson is a buffon. Enacting soil testing what madness how do you enforce that when the same ministry has failed to recoup “donations” from Gono in terms of farm machinery and equipment.
Hog wash,,.It was all in the papers, Muzenda did not pay back the money owed to Barclay’s bank. Is it any different now? Would you ask Mnangagwa to pay back,ZANU failed to make him pay back all the money that disappeared from zanu companies he was in charge of. Futile effort.
On a positive note can Govt quickly tell us how to access the loans
Having banks managing the fund will not guarantee repayment because the problem of lack of collateral is central to the whole problem. How would a bank deal with defaulters when the land is not bankable because they do not own it?